SLI / X-Fire Question

[gammaray]

Are there any problems with SLI or X-fire now?

i know in the past, some games just refused to work as intended.

i need to buy a video card for my next build, and i am wondering if i should get one card around 400$ or put 2 in SLI / xfire at 200$ each

what you guys think?

 

[Termie]

Both work, Crossfire takes a lot more fiddling to make it work well. While two GTX 660s at $200 a piece would be slightly faster than a single GTX 770, it really doesn't make much sense to buy two mid-range cards at the same time. SLI only makes sense as an upgrade down the road.

 

[guskline]

I actually have 2 gtx660s in sli in a 8320 rig OC'd to 4.3Ghz. Since the gtx770 was just released I'm sure someone will compare 2 660s to a single 770.

The price of the 770 is very attractive. BTW, my 660s in sli are measurably faster than my single gtx680 in rig 2 below.

 

[thilanliyan]

I'd rather get a single card for $400.

 

[Skott]

Single GPU is pretty much the best way to go in most situations. Especially if you are using just one monitor. About 75% of the games today will run on Xfire/SLI without much problem. Some games still dont I hear. As termie said Xfire takes a bit more fiddling in some cases compared to SLI. For the $400 price tag you mentioned i would say go with one really good card as opposed to two $200 GPUs. What you can do is get the $400 GPU and if you want a second one later on down the road get it and Xfire/SLI if you need the extra performance. Just make sure mobo, cpu, and psu can handle that spec.

 

[boxleitnerb]

SLI/CF only makes sense with highend, i.e. to achieve performance that you cannot get with one GPU. And even then, you should take into consideration that the "feel" at a certain fps value likely will be different between single-GPU and CF/SLI.

 

[Final8ty]

SLI/CF only makes sense with highend, i.e. to achieve performance that you cannot get with one GPU. And even then, you should take into consideration that the "feel" at a certain fps value likely will be different between single-GPU and CF/SLI.

:thumbsup:

 

[BrightCandle]

SLI is pretty close to being single card like for a lot of games these days. Some games still have noticeable moments of stutter but I would say it mostly works flawlessly.

Comparatively Crossfire right now is fundamentally broken. Any FPS figures you see for it are flat out wrong. I highly recommend you go to pcper.com and read through their frame rating review, it will show you everything you need to know about these two technologies in comparison to each other and more importantly show you videos of the effect that SLI has to single cards and crossfire has to both as well. That way you can test if you care about these problems or not.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

CF is currently broken

SLI while generally flawless can be have issues.

Generally speaking I will go dual low end cards if their combined price is lower or the same as a higher end card with a 30-40% performance advantage.

Normally what I would do is buy a card I can justify, then later when the tech refreshes I'd pick up another either new heavily discounted, or even used.


Some like doing this, it provides really good value for your buck. However others will only do single and often will upgrade at the cost of a major hit to perf/$, just so they can have the latest and greatest.

 

[gammaray]

i'm asking out cos, i'd like to try SLI or xfire, never did so far, always had a single high end card in my systems.

but, since those cards are rarely if not ever on sale, while mid range often are, i'm wondering if for the same price, like Balla mentionned above, i could get more performance for the same buck.

gonna read that link pcper

thx

 

[bystander36]

If you just want to use SLI/CF for the sake of having a multi-GPU setup, go SLI, as it is working a lot better. That said, I generally do not recommend multi-GPU's unless you cannot get the power you need or want from a single GPU. The same hold true for going to 3-way or 4-way.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

In my experience SLI seems to be better than Crossfire. Micro-stutter is a slight issue at slow frame rates but it tends to be more of a problem for crossfire, the frame timing in SLI feels a lot better.

Generally speaking I'd advise against multi-GPU when you can get 1 powerful GPU to do the job, while it does work generally very well in both camps you do run in to problems from time to time and it's often a pain in the ass to fix, if you're prepared to put up with those issues then it's a decent enough solution.

My personal usage this time around was to plan ahead with a decent PSU and SLI ready mobo, and then simply get a used 2nd card later on down the line, I've recently added a 2nd 580 because it makes more sense as an upgrade path as a full replacement at this stage would cost a lot more.